


Justify the Means

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Interrogation, Manipulation, Moral Dilemmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21603508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: They’re at war, aren’t they? War changes the rules. Millions of lives could depend on the Resistance getting intel out of Phasma. Such high-profile captives don’t land in their lap every day.Rey is the only Resistance member who’s had the chance to steal knowledge from inside the mind of one of the galaxy’s most proficient Force-torturers. She could make their captive talk.
Relationships: Phasma/Rey
Comments: 18
Kudos: 40
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Justify the Means

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GremlinGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GremlinGirl/gifts).



They bring the woman through in shackles, wearing a black bodyglove and a blacker expression. She’s tall and broad, built like a fighter, with her white-blonde hair curled close to her scalp. Rey doesn’t know who she is until Finn blurts her name.

‘We tractored her in as she was preparing her shuttle for a lightspeed jump,’ says the captain of the Resistance frigate _Virgillia._ ‘Tried to pass herself off as a traveller. But we had our intel, and we found this–’ He tosses a clearly branded First Order communications device onto table – ‘to prove it.’

‘Captain Phasma was reported dead,’ says Leia. ‘She was on the _Supremacy_ when it went down.’

‘I’m no expert, but she don’t seem dead to me.’ The _Virgillia_ ’s captain has nasty blaster burns on his hands and a rough field bandage on his upper arm. ‘Didn’t like being captured, neither.’

Rey looks at Phasma glowering behind the force-field around her temporary containment unit. ‘If the First Order cared enough to rescue her from the _Supremacy,_ what’s she doing all by herself in a civilian shuttle?’

‘I daresay that will be the first of many questions we have for her,’ says Leia.

* * *

Rey isn’t an interrogator. She isn’t rostered on guard rotation. But she's the only Resistance member trained in the Force – the only member, moreover, who’s had the chance to steal knowledge from inside the mind of one of the galaxy’s most proficient Force-torturers. She knows the technique for tearing through a captive’s mental barriers and laying bare their innermost secrets.

No one has asked her to do it. Her rational mind knows that the expectant looks from Leia are a product of her imagination. But while she avoids the brig and soothes her anxiety by remembering the Resistance charter on humane treatment and universal rights, the interrogations stall.

‘We want you to help us help you,’ Leia’s best intelligence officers tell Phasma.

‘We can come to an arrangement that’s in everyone’s best interest.’

‘’The less trouble you cause, the less trouble you’ll have.’

Phasma keeps her mouth shut. She sits through every session with a look of haughty boredom, and they take her back to her cell at the end no wiser than they were when they first brought her out.

The communications device self-destructs when they try to inspect it. That, Rey does feel qualified to offer her help with, but she quickly learns that repairing a device from battlefield damage and desert erosion is different from restoring one that’s been remotely wiped on purpose. The computers on Phasma’s shuttle have been similarly scrubbed, and sophisticated killware has been patched through to the nav console that might otherwise have given them her flight history. The only thing anyone learns from any of the gear is that the First Order definitely know it has fallen into enemy hands, and have done a supremely efficient job at rendering it useless.

* * *

They’re at war, aren’t they? War changes the rules. Millions of lives could depend on the Resistance getting intel out of Phasma. Such high-profile captives don’t land in their lap every day. It’s a chance to pry the secrets from inside the First Order’s innermost shell. Perhaps their _only_ chance. Rey could do it. It wouldn’t even have to hurt – she knows the technique, and she’s sure she could apply it more gently than Kylo Ren prefers to.

The logic is sound but it doesn’t persuade her. Rey knows exactly where the temptation is coming from, and if the darkness wasn’t tempting, then the Jedi wouldn’t have had to spend so much time and energy resisting it. 

She has to be better.

* * *

‘I thought you’d be better,’ says Phasma when Rey enters the brig and stands outside the cell. No one invited her down here, and she didn’t come for any reason in particular. ‘Scarier. Stronger. The fearsome Jedi warrior that Kylo Ren himself failed to defeat.’ She looks Rey up and down, eyes lingering in a way that makes her feel strangely vulnerable despite the force-field between them. ‘Ren would have had me talking by now.’

‘Or screaming,’ says Rey. ‘What kind of questions do you think he’s going to have for you if you go back to the First Order after so long in close contact with an enemy? I know what your leader’s temper is like. I know what’s waiting for you out there if you ever manage to escape this cell. Finn tells me you’re a survivor, Phasma. And right now the Resistance is your best chance of survival.’

‘That’s quite a story you’ve spun yourself.’ If the mention of her former subordinate affects Phasma, she doesn’t let it show. ‘How do you know for sure that I’m still working for the Order? Or, on the other hand, that I’m not here on your flagship by my Supreme Leader’s express design?’

Rey doesn’t know any such thing for sure. Phasma’s presence is a moving blur in the Force, tempting her to loom in closer, pin it down, hold it still. She knows exactly how to make the trick work. She could do it without even breaking a sweat. ‘They fried your shuttle’s whole computer system within minutes of our tractor beam locking on,’ she says, resisting the temptation.

‘Yes, so I’ve heard.’

‘They’ve left you no way to reach out for help and no ship to fly away on if you manage to escape this cell. They’ve washed their hands of you. Why bother protecting their secrets when they haven’t bothered protecting you?’

‘Why not?’ Phasma shrugs, her shoulders loose despite the weight of the binders on her wrists. She looks like she could free herself by flexing. A woman this large doesn’t belong in a cage, Rey thinks, and then wonders why she thought it. ‘You people offer such lovely hospitality. And if, as you say, I’m to expect harsher treatment outside your captivity than in it, I see no reason to shorten my stay.’

There’s challenge in her gaze. _Hurt me,_ that bravado says, like a veteran cage fighter trying to lure an opponent in for the kill. _Force me to cooperate if you dare._

Rey could. Phasma’s ice-blue eyes are luring her in. She could.

She won’t.

* * *

C-3PO’s droid intelligence network brings in news of a First Order expansion push into the rich mining fields of the far western reaches. Safe until now thanks to their remoteness and natural asteroid-belt defences, the unexploited ore planets out there could fund a whole new fleet’s worth of military R&D. Of course, the First Order already have all the fleet they need. Whatever they’re planning for the excess resources can’t bode anything good.

‘They’re getting bolder by the day,’ say Leia’s analysts. ‘They already enjoy uncontested access to the Core Worlds and every major trade port in known space. If they gain much more strength than they already have, there’ll be nowhere in the galaxy outside their control.’

‘We need to find out what they’re building,’ says a thin-faced, anxious man – a survivor of the Hosnian cataclysm, more terrified than most by the ever looming prospect that their enemies might once again construct another planet-killing weapon.

The next intel brief brings news that stormtroopers have been rounding up prominent engineers and whisking them off to a facility no one’s heard of.

‘Planning something?’ Phasma echoes back to her interrogators, as Rey watches through a security feed that technically no one has authorised her to access. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve been out of the loop for so long, you see. I’m sure by now my insider knowledge is getting so out of date as to be almost worthless.’

* * *

Every day, every hour, every minute they waste is ample time for the First Order to destroy more lives.

The interrogations aren’t working. Phasma laughs openly about how trapped her captors are by their humanitarian code, how incapable of issuing demands in a way that might move her to comply. Her broad chest swells with arrogant pride, legs sprawled open as she sits across the interview table in an imposing, strangely masculine posture that makes her interrogators look pitiful compared to her glory.

 _Hurt me,_ she says with every cocky word and fearless smirk. _I dare you to do it. I know you won’t._

It doesn’t have to be black and white, says the voice in Rey’s head. She knows the technique, knows it straight from the head of the man who once tried to turn it on her, and she’s sure, she’s _sure_ she can use it more gently than Phasma deserves.

She watches the security feeds, and when Phasma glances up at the camera, Rey feels their eyes lock and feels a frisson of inexplicable heat that urges her to do something stupid.

* * *

‘You’ve kept me waiting,’ Phasma says, leaning forward in her cell until the force-field crackles inches from her face. She doesn’t rise from her narrow bench – she’s tall enough, commanding enough, not to need the height advantage. ‘I knew if I held out long enough, sooner or later they’d send you in to do the dirty work.’

‘No one sent me,’ says Rey, willing her voice not to quaver. She’s never been one to intimidate easily; Phasma, bound and caged like a feral animal, isn’t exactly primed to intimidate. Yet there’s no other explanation for the strange, vibrating feeling inside her chest. ‘I chose to come. You sound as though that’s what you want.’

‘Does it matter what I want? You’re here to take from me against my will.’

‘You’ve been given every chance to cooperate. Just say the word now and this doesn’t have to happen.’

Their eyes lock. Seeking a sign of fear, Rey finds nothing but the same avid, taunting bravado that called her here in the first place. _Do it,_ Phasma’s ice-chip eyes are telling her. _Do it now, or I’ll know once and for all that you’re not capable of it._

Rey thinks of the intel that this simple deed could win her. She thinks of the First Order’s cloak of darkness spreading across the galaxy, and the blood of her friends laying down their lives in droves to stop it. She thinks of those missing engineers and the nightmarish war machines coming together in some hidden facility. She thinks of Phasma’s broad shoulders and her confident smile and her pitiless, irresistible eyes.

She lifts her hand, and calls on the Force, and in one blinding moment of clear decision she has Phasma’s life securely in her grasp.

The cell block around them seems to ripple and fade. Rey remembers what this technique feels like. She’s done it before. She remembers the absolute certainty, when she touched Kylo Ren’s mind, that there was something redeemable there in the darkness. She remembers the flickering match-flare of light, and the shadowy piles of kindling it illuminated, waiting to catch fire and shine like a beacon. It wasn’t hope – it was knowledge, pure and solid, that the chance of a brighter future lay in wait for the soul in front of her.

It isn’t there now. Phasma’s soul is as cold as her eyes, swept clean of any flammable emotions, as angular and menacing as the Star Destroyer she calls home. Rey gasps, almost yanking back her hand before she catches herself, and Phasma just stares at her, tense as a bowstring and waiting to snap.

‘You will tell me everything you know,’ Rey commands, Force flowing through her. ‘About the First Order. About what they’re doing in the western reaches. About what _you_ were doing when we caught you.’

‘Make me,’ says Phasma, leaning further forward and bearing her teeth in a savage smile. ‘Give me a reason to fear you, girl. Show me that you’re different from those friends of yours who simper and beg. Show me you know how to _take._ ’

Rey can. She will. Gathering all her power – gathering the hard core of anger from the last time she came into contact with this technique – she pits herself against the mental barrier that protects Phasma’s secrets. Phasma is strong, but she’s not strong in the Force, and all her combat training and superior size can’t save her from the crushing weight of Rey’s will bearing down on her. The barrier starts to crack. Rey feels it in a sudden, searing burst of pain and the hoarse sound that leaves Phasma’s mouth as she throws her head back and grits her teeth. Pain and terror and triumph, and as she rips her way into Phasma’s mind, she can’t tell which feeling belongs to whom but she knows she’s not far now from seizing hold of everything she wants.

Pain.

Terror.

Triumph.

‘No.’ The word belongs to Rey, though it takes a moment to reach her ears; she’s staggering backwards, away from the cage, away from the horror of her momentary lapse in reason. The Force never chose Rey so she could make it an instrument of torture. The Resistance never chose her so she could vanquish the darkness by becoming one with it herself. This is wrong. She’s known it since the start, and she’s been easing her way into it anyway, making excuses and pretending not to notice the slow creep of corruption inside her own mind. She feels sick with herself. Sick for the victim – Rey’s victim, now, no matter what her own unrelated crimes might be – sitting slumped in the bench inside the cell, apparently unconscious due to the violence of what Rey just did to her. She must have gone further than she thought.

Swallowing bile, Rey lowers the force-field and enters the cell. That’s when Phasma snaps her head back up and lunges.

Rey can’t react. She’s frozen in place, slowed by the weight of guilt and sluggish in the face of shock. The huge, heavy binders fall away from Phasma’s wrists, and for a wild moment Rey thinks Phasma actually _has_ burst free of them – but no. They’re unclasped, and one of Phasma’s fingernails is bloody, and the red-smeared nanochip pinched between her thumb and forefinger is more than large enough to hold a master lockpicking code. She must have prised it out from her own nail bed while playing dead. The solid weight of her knocks Rey flying, and Phasma is on top of her at once, her hands at Rey’s throat and her eyes ablaze with hatred.

Ablaze with something, at least. She has every advantage. She doesn’t make the kill.

‘Pathetic,’ Phasma snarls, so close in Rey’s face that she can feel her hot breath. ‘That’s all you have to offer, girl? That’s all you’re capable of? I’ve been wasting my time here.’

‘Your time?’ Rey rasps. The shock is wearing off, and she’s regaining control of her muscles; she could push Phasma off. She doesn’t. Not yet. There’s a strategic reason for it, probably, but right now Rey can’t think of it through the buzzing emptiness in her head and the weight of Phasma’s body on hers.

‘You didn’t think that bumbling idiot of a ship’s captain _actually_ managed to catch me unawares, did you? My people leaked my movements to your spies on purpose. Your Resistance took so long to come for me that at first I thought you’d seen through my trap. But no. It was just incompetence. I should have realised right then that you’d be as much a disappointment as the rest of your friends.’

That smarts in a way the physical attack didn’t. The words speak to a fear of inadequacy that lurked inside Rey since the shadowy days of family memory that she has long suppressed from her waking mind. But she has no reason to crave this woman’s approval. No reason to care beyond keeping her talking in the hope that she’ll let something useful slip about her plans. In the hope that there’s something still to be salvaged from this catastrophe of an interrogation. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ she says thinly, making the most of the last whisps of air that Phasma is still trying to squeeze from her lungs. ‘What were you hoping to find instead?’

‘Power,’ says Phasma. ‘The power I’d heard so much about. The First Order is rotting from the inside out while our leader wastes all his energy fighting himself and pining after the light he professes to want to crush. I thought perhaps the woman who defeated him might have something to offer. I wanted to see you for myself. If you’d been worth my time, I would have offered you a chance to escape this sinking ship of a cause and come back with me. But–’ She releases the pressure on Rey’s throat. Her hand lingers there, brushing lightly. ‘You’re not worth my time.’

 _You wouldn’t be the first to make the offer,_ is what Rey wants to say. She wants to follow it with something bold and insulting about how incapable Phasma is of tempting her. But she doesn’t get the chance, because suddenly the caress of Phasma’s hand on her neck is replaced by the sharp pinprick of a needle breaking skin. There’s no point wondering where she got it – if she can avoid the Resistance’s weapons scanners by embedding contraband beneath her own skin then there’s no limit to the number of micro-tools she could have smuggled inside. 

There’s also no point wondering what the needle was for, because the chemical rush of it hits Rey a scant millisecond after the initial pain. The cell swims around her. Phasma’s pale face blurs.

And looms closer.

‘It’s a shame,’ Phasma says, in a voice that’s barely above a whisper. ‘I wanted you to be someone I could respect. I wanted you to show me that you had the nerve to take what you need.’ Rey’s eyes fall closed, so she doesn’t see Phasma close the last of the distance between them. But she feels it. Feels soft, plump lips brush hers, feels a swirl of tongue and the sweet sting of teeth gently catching her lip.

And then Phasma’s weight lifts off her. She’s leaving.

Rey is alone in the cell.

She’s alone in the dark.

She’s alone in her own mind, sinking into drugged unconsciousness.

* * *

‘No one blames you, Rey,’ Leia lies with kind eyes, when she wakes up much later and learns that Phasma has escaped the Resistance flagship on a stolen X-wing leaving piles of unconscious bodies behind her. ‘Your good intentions do you credit, but they were never a match for someone as cunning as Phasma.’

‘She gets in people’s heads,’ says Finn. ‘Trust me on that one. She doesn’t need the Force to manipulate people’s minds – she’s built her whole First Order career around it. It’s not your fault.’

It is her fault.

Rey can’t make sense of any of it: the arrival or the departure, her own inexcusable stupidity or Phasma’s baffling choice to orchestrate an entire captive scenario just to … what, meet her? Tempt her into committing an act of wartime atrocity, in the dim hope of finding an ally to join or replace her existing unstable dark Force user? Snoke, Maz Kanata, Han, Leia, Luke, Kylo Ren, now Phasma – they all treat her like she’s part of a story that she’s never even read, like she’s some pivotal weapon in a fight that’s been raging since before she even knew the word. She doesn’t understand.

Sometimes she wonders if the whole conversation in the cell was a hallucination brought on by whatever knocked her out. Perhaps her timelines are muddled; perhaps she got drugged when she first went down to the brig, and her unconscious mind has filled in the lost time with vivid stories about temptation and darkness. Maybe she imagined the feel of Phasma’s muscular body on hers. Maybe she imagined the taste of those plump, surprisingly tender lips.

But she can’t stop thinking about all her mistakes.

And she can’t stop thinking about that kiss.


End file.
